Assault on battery: the promising, frustrating, indispensable race by government and industry to revolutionize the storage of electricity.

• Author: Isaacs, Eric D.
• Position: Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy - Book review

Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy

by Seth Fletcher

Hill & Wang, 272 pp.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Just five years ago, the documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? claimed to prove conclusively that American electric vehicle technology had been effectively buried by an unholy cartel of car makers, government bureaucrats, oil companies, and SUV-loving consumers. The documentary's hard-hitting reporting and acerbic style persuaded thousands of moviegoers that American industry would never allow an electric car to challenge the supremacy of the internal combustion engine.

That wasn't just the opinion of a few cranky independent filmmakers: the electric car has been a running joke on The Simpsons for years. (On a family trip to a theme park, Homer and Bart visit the Electric Car of the Future attraction--sponsored by the Gasoline Producers of America. On the ride, their sad, pastel-pink vehicle whines, "Hello, I'm an electric car. I can't go very fast or very far.")

But now, GM's Chevy Volt is being rolled out in cities across the country--and has been honored by Motor Trend as the 2011 Car of the Year: "A Car of the Future You Can Drive Today." Other car makers are racing to get their electric cars on American roadways: the Nissan Leaf is already in a few American markets, with nationwide rollout planned for next year; Toyota has unveiled a plug-in Prius; Mitsubishi is bringing its MiEV electric vehicle to U.S. dealers this year; and an electric Ford Focus has been announced as well. These battery-powered vehicles are generating so much buzz that the producers of the 2006 documentary have been forced to make a sequel--The Revenge of the Electric Car.

How did electric cars come so far, so fast? And, more important, both for consumers and for the future of our country, where will they go from here? These are the questions posed--and at least partially answered--in Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy, by Seth Fletcher, a senior editor at Popular Science magazine. In this well-written, accessible history of lithium batteries and their role in the development of practical electric cars, Fletcher makes a strong case that new energy storage technologies are the key to a green industrial revolution.

"Electricity," Fletcher explains, is "the cleanest and most flexible" alternative to gasoline. "It's piped into every home in the country. Mile by mile, it's cheaper compared with gasoline.... It can come from almost any source--natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind." There's just one problem: it's hard to store. So if we want electric cars that aren't powered by range-limiting extension cords, we need to build better batteries.

Historically, cars have been equipped with lead-acid batteries--heavy, environmentally unfriendly, and limited in storage capacity. So any car powered solely by a lead-acid battery--like the EV1 eulogized in Who Killed the Electric Car?--will have limited range (less than 100 miles) and will require frequent, time-consuming recharging.

Seeking a better alternative, scientists started "scouring the periodic table," in Fletcher's words, experimenting with various exotic chemical compounds before turning their sights on lithium, the lightest metal in the universe. Lithium's "eagerness"...